It is indisputable Winter Carnival has left its glory days behind. What was once Dartmouth's snowy celebration of winter a jamboree marked by soaring ski jumpers, thousands of visitors on campus and the classic Carnival Ball is now a snowless weekend of frivolity and flair. Yet students, alumni and community members disagree about whether Winter Carnival's changes are natural responses to the shifting times or indifference-driven devolutions.
"The Dartmouth spirit is no less strong than it was 20 or 30 years ago," Wylie Collins '83 said. "Just because you do things differently, mostly for the better, doesn't mean that the D' spirit is not as strong, or stronger."
While some members of the Dartmouth community question the vehemence of today's Winter Carnival spirit, others revere Winter Carnival as the big weekend that ties the College to its beautiful, rugged and bone-chillingly cold setting.
"Winter Carnival is probably the most Dartmouth' out of the three events," Lawton Leung '10 said, comparing the weekend to Homecoming and Green Key.
However, those who are less enthusiastic about the Carnival tradition are the growing majority. Many students interviewed by The Dartmouth said they do not feel particularly invested in the big weekend an attitude that many alumni also perceive.
"[Winter Carnival] weekends were celebrated with, what seemed to us, a greater intensity than now," John Myers '69, whose children attended the College, said.
Today, Winter Carnival is centered on parties rather than traditions, several students and recent alumni told The Dartmouth.
"I don't know what the significance is of Winter Carnival," Tomi Jun '08 said. "It's just basically a drinking weekend. People look forward to it, but more so for the parties."
Nick Dykstra '10 said he felt that alcohol and parties are key components of Winter Carnival because the cold weather often discourages students from participating in Winter Carnival's outdoor events.
"No one really wants to be outside for Winter Carnival," he said.
This disinterest dampens the overall Winter Carnival experience, Anna Villarruel '12 said. The weekend's alcohol-free traditions, such as the snow sculpture, could benefit from more student participation, she said.
"It would be awesome if we could get the entire school involved [in the snow sculpture]," she said, noting that she has "yet to be inspired" after seeing last year's sculpture efforts, which suffered from warm weather and low student involvement.
While this year's Colosseum proudly reminds the community that not all Carnival spirit has melted away, it also evokes the snow sculptures that, at the height of Winter Carnival, bejeweled the entire campus. Their absence like the absence of the keg and ski jump competitions indicate that Winter Carnival is not quite the jubilant celebration of winter that it once was.
The SculpturesIn 1927, fraternities and residence halls began competing in the campus-wide snow sculpture contest, in which students aimed to build the largest, most creative snow sculpture on their lawns. Sculptures were judged for "appropriateness of subject, originality of design, skill of execution, and effectiveness of setting by day and by night," according to a 1948 New Hampshire Gazette story.
Sculptures that decorated the entire campus were "absolutely beautiful" and "a marvel to look at," said Jack Stinson, Hanover resident since 1975 and owner of Stinson's Village Store.
"Everywhere you looked, you saw a snow sculpture that was equivalent, or almost equivalent, to the one you'd see on the Green," Stinson said.
In 1950, Sigma Nu fraternity trucked in a giant block of frozen orange juice from Florida to create an edible snow sculpture. In 1935, what is now Phi Tau co-ed fraternity constructed an 18-foot King Kong snow statue that stared threateningly into the second-story window of next-door Alpha Theta co-ed fraternity, according to the 1968 Carnival press brochure.
By the 1970s, students no longer participated in the contest with the same zeal, Bob Osborne '71 said.
"We didn't take it as fully or as seriously as the people before us," Osborne said. "There were some people who would be very dedicated to the ice statue, and other people that were like, Why are we doing this?' It wasn't apathy, it was just change. Dartmouth was changing."
In celebration of the 1969 Winter Carnival theme "Fire and Ice," Osborne's fraternity, Phi Delta Alpha, spoofed Eugene O'Neil's play, "The Iceman Cometh," by building a sculpture called "The Fireman Cometh."
"But we got tired of building it, so we just burned it, according to the theme of fire and ice," Osborne said. "Then that kind of summed up the year."
The recent trend toward mild even warm and rainy Hanover winters is largely to blame for the decline of sculpture building, Stinson said. Over the past 10-15 years, unfavorable weather has hindered construction efforts and discouraged students from pouring time and energy into elaborate structures, he said.
N. Bruce Duthu '80, a Native American studies professor, also attributed the loss of the tradition to a scarcity of snow.
"We always had tons of snow back in the 1970s for these sorts of activities," Duthu said in an e-mail to The Dartmouth. "So, diminishing raw material' may be an additional factor to consider here."
Stinson said he believed that the deterioration of fervor for snow sculpture construction coincided with the decreased involvement of members of the surrounding community.
In the past, Upper Valley residents and Hanover High School students mirrored Dartmouth students' efforts by building snow sculptures on their front lawns and at the high school, respectively, Stinson said.
"I think there's as much enthusiasm for celebrating Winter Carnival as before," Stinson said. "I just think that the traditional outward signs that the community would take pride in [have diminished]. It was huge it was the whole community."
Today, the Green's Colosseum is the lonely emblem of Winter Carnival zeal.
The Keg JumpThe winter of 1981 saw the birth of the instant Winter Carnival favorite Psi Upsilon fraternity's keg jump competition, in which students in ice skates attempted to soar over as many kegs as possible while surround by approximately 500 cheering classmates.
"It's like a gladiator contest," former Psi U President Giano Cromley '95 told The Dartmouth in 1994. "If [the jumper] gave a good effort, or if the crowd support is there, then we'll keep him in."
One of the masterminds behind the original keg jump, who asked to remain anonymous due to safety concerns surrounding the event, remembered building an ice rink outside of Psi U and placing the inaugural keg in the rink's center.
"One by one, [the brothers] decided we should try to outdo each other by jumping over the kegs," he said. "By the afternoon, crowds started gathering and other students started noticing what we were doing."
The tradition continued for nearly two decades, expanding in popularity each year.
"People here are dying for tradition," Cromley told The Dartmouth in 1994. "You do something twice and it suddenly becomes [a tradition]. It's an unstoppable force."
In order to launch themselves over 10 or more kegs, participants ice-skated for several meters to gain momentum, according to a 1998 article in The Dartmouth. Mattresses were stacked at the end of the row of kegs to help cushion participants' landings.
Students largely ignored the physical dangers of participating in the event, the keg jump creator said.
"People were literally hurling their bodies over 8-10 barrels without any regard for safety," the anonymous alumnus said. "None of us had pads, we were basically all just going for it."
At 14 kegs, David Mace '98 holds the record for most kegs jumped.
Beginning in 1984, Psi U charged a $25 entry fee for jumpers and sold jump-related T-shirts to spectators to raise funds for local charities, including the Hanover Diabetes Clinic, Outreach House and Hannah House.
The keg jump last occurred in February 2000, when the College alleged that alcohol was served to minors at the event. Psi U was subsequently placed on probation for six weeks.
At the time, controversy regarding former College President James Wright's Student Life Initiative a policy that, at the time, banned the formation of new, single-sex Greek organizations at the College and that Wright said would end the Greek system "as we know it" led many students to blame the administration, Mike Gault '03 said.
"Everyone was pointing to the school, saying it was their fault," Gault said. "There was a lot of tension there anyway. Those who were pro-Greek were under the assumption that the school was trying to do away with all the fun."
Psi U members estimated that attendance at the final keg jump exceeded 600 people, according to a 2004 article in The Dartmouth.
The following year, the fraternity was unable to secure the insurance necessary to cover the participants' frequent injuries, and the keg jump was indefinitely canceled.
The Ski JumpIn 1922, the College constructed its Vale de Tempe the ski jump on the golf course named for the Greek god Apollo's favorite valley.
"At Carnival time, the big jump was naturally the central attraction: flags stream[ed] from the top of the tower...and a shivery trumpet called to herald each jumper starting down," David Bradley '38 wrote in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine in 1993.
The ski jump which boasted an 85-foot tower with 127 steps was designed for jumps of up to 135 feet. Over its 71 years, jumpers on the Vale de Tempe experienced nothing worse than a broken arm, according to Bradley.
Each Winter Carnival, the ski jump competitions attracted hundreds of spectators, who often stood along the landing hill to watch jumpers fly overhead.
"We would spend all afternoon watching the competitions," Wylie Collins '83 said. "At the time, that was a big part of the Carnival. We watched competitors quite literally soar."
Although ski jumping was meant to be an intercollegiate varsity event, daring non-skier students would also speed off the ramp some braved the jump on cafeteria trays while others launched off the ramp in the middle of the night.
Due to competition costs and a lack of demand, the jump was decommissioned in 1993.
In his commemorative article in 1993, Bradley wrote, "Farewell then to Carnival jumping, the heart of winter exuberances at Dartmouth. Something local and precious. Yale has its incomparable Whiffenpoofs, Harvard its Head-of-the-Charles. At Dartmouth it was Carnival and convocation of the big hill."
